Another Omnipod PDM failure

Yes, but a very long overnight when you have a 5 year old not accustomed to routine injections anymore… :frowning:

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Yeah, my thoughts exactly…now that we’re on the POD, I hope I even REMEMBER how to do MDI. :fearful: Hope you get the replacement soon!

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24 posts were split to a new topic: Pump insulin: vials or pen cartridges?

Given that the PDMs are probably worth a hundred bucks, I would like to purchase a spare in case I have a failure. I have a spare meter, spare pens, spare pods, but only one PDM. BUT - they want to charge $6300! and overnight shipping is not an option when you are hiking in the mountains or traveling in another country.

It would be nice if Insulet shipped 2 x PDMs for the $6300 CDN my insurance company had to pay.

Grrr…

As a side note, my back-up is an insulin pen with cartridges that I carry with me along with my meter. Yes - I am weird and do not use the PDM meter (or the PDM bolus calculator).

I just order insulin in cartridges and use the cartridges to fill the pods. If I ever have a pod problem when I am on the go, I use a cartridge that I carry with me. The cartridge I carry will be the next cartridge I use to fill a POD. As a bonus it is at room temperature when I need it.

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@Aaron,
It has been shown by 2 brilliant minds in Canada and the U.S. that the Canadian and U.S. Pods work interchangeably with each other on Canadian and U.S PDM’s…
canadian-u-s-omnipod-swap-test

Now if only you could find a person in the U.S. who has your shipping address, and has a propensity to flaunt convention and would be willing to ship you a U.S PDM that he buys specifically for you for from Insulet for $300…

If only you had the ability to contact such a person via PM on this site…

If only…

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:laughing:

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OMG…this literally just happened to us just now. :frowning: We’re on the phone with Tech Spt now. I was attempting to check Liam’s BG’s, I lost control of the PDM and it dropped (only a foot or two to the ground)…and I kind of caught it with my foot on the way down which softened the blow. When I picked it back up, it was in the process of resetting, then I received this exact error with a long alert.

Looks like they’re wanting us to do a reset on it atm. We’ll see how it goes.

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So we were able to reset our PDM with a paperclip! We had to do the following:

  1. Insert paperclip for 2 seconds (in the battery compartment area.)
  2. Dispose of the current POD
  3. Reset the date/time/etc., on the PDM.
  4. Apply a new POD

And…for whatever reason, they said the bolus calcs in the PDM would not work for 4 - 6 hours so we’ll see what happens.

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Do you guys have a gelskin on it? That can help protect it a bit.

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Yeah, we do.

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I do as well–although mine wasn’t dropped. It happened in the middle of the night while we were sleeping.

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We also have had the PDM give the scream of death/scary error message and done the paper clip reset, a couple of times in 2 years. It has worked and we’ve never had to actually get the overnight replacement but it is unnerving. I keep an old pen (and backup script for cartridges) and lantus (which is expired but still on fridge and would work in a pinch). For backpacking we take old fashioned syringes and novolog.

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I google searched for “reset failed Omnipod PDM” and came across this old thread as the first search result.

The paperclip trick on the PDM worked for me and I am now back in business with the PDM except for not being about to use the bolus calculator for 3 hours and 15 minutes.

Background - I woke up and did a bolus and walked away from the PDM. The bolus started but I guess the PDM did not get an acknowledge back. When I walked back in range of the PDM the pod went into scream of death mode and the PDM was stuck on an alarm screen.

I tired pulling the PDM batteries but it did not do anything as the PDM alarm kept going. To reset I opened the battery compartment on the PDM and stuck a paperclip in the little hole below the batteries and managed to reset the PDM.

New pod is now on so I can go back to sleep :zzz:

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Heh. Pretty nice the Google search gave you FUD right away. God forbid you’d have to use results from another forum :slight_smile:

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Wow. Another PDM error about 1 year 2 months later and google took my to this thread. This one happened about 1 hour after a PDM better change and I went to bolus.

I left the pod on all day but i can’t tell anymore if I am getting any basal so I will do the paperclip reset and chamge the pod.

Will call tech support about a new PDM too.

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Is this anywhere near the expected lifespan of the internal battery? The only PDM failure I’ve ever had was because of the dying battery, after about a year and a half. Guess that makes me due for a failure this spring.

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The internal battery on my PDM is no longer any good. It is not a problem for me, I just replace the batteries every few weeks when I am doing a pod change. It requires a clock reset, but that is the only issue.

I think that is preferable to having to get a new PDM and reprogramming everything, and losing all the history.

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This is my problem - I forget and run the batteries right out and then end up changing with an active pod.

If I was better at changing the batteries when I change my pod I would not have any of these problems and would not have to worry about a dead internal battery.

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I have had it happen a few times when I meant to change the bats out at the same time as a pod change, and then as soon as I activated the pod I realized I forgot the bats. Then it’s like, “Crap! I hope the bats will last another 3 days!!”

I think the way to go might be - in the pod box with 10 pods, maybe putting two pods in their own ziplock bag, and each of those bags has 2 batteries!

That would be a great way of reminding. What do you think?

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That is not a bad idea. I might just toss 2 AAA batteries in the box of 10 pods when I get them. Then when I grab the new box I change the PDM batteries. I find the batteries I use last for at least a box of 10.

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